Greenbrier County, West Virginia Biography of JOHN LEWIS, PIONEER. This biography was submitted by Sandy Spradling, E-mail address: This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm History of Greenbrier County J. R. Cole Lewisburg, WV 1917 p. 100-103 JOHN LEWIS, PIONEER. After the settlement at Jamestown, in 1607, it was over one hundred years before the white people got as far west as the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge, and it was still later that a settlement was made in the Valley of Virginia. The Blue Ridge, near the Potomac, offered less of a barrier than the mountain farther south, and the oldest town in the valley, Winchester, was founded in the first part of the eighteenth century. The country was soon settled by the Pennsylvania Germans, who retained their native language and customs. The lands of the Shenandoah Valley attracted the Germans in great quantities and the settlements moved south, but through the instrumentality of John Lewis, who had settled near what is now Staunton, this steady immigration was met by the Scotch-Irish from the northern part of Ireland, who came to this part of Virginia in great numbers in the thirties and forties of that century. John Lewis landed in Portugal about the year 1728, and thence to America, and he was the pioneer of the settlers of Augusta county, which county was formed in 1745. John Lewis probably established himself in the valley in 1732, and it is certain that his ability to colonize was so great that in 1738 there was enough living people in the vicinity of Staunton to require churches and schools. He was a man of education, force and power, and he transferred the people who were fleeing from the north of Ireland by the shipload to Augusta county. It is to this highly effective man that the people of Augusta, Rockbridge, Highland, Bath, Alleghany and the Greenbrier valley owe their distinctive citizenship, and full credit ought to be given him for his enterprise by our people. If there is anything in monuments he ought to have one as enduring as the pyramids of Egypt. Some histories have it that John Lewis came to the valley by the way of Pennsylvania, but this is probably a mistake. John Lewis came by way of Jamestown, to Williamburg, the capital of the colony. At this place he got his first information of the southern part of the valley from a man by the name of John Salling. John Marlin and John Salling had some years before gone from Winchester as far south as the Roanoke river, where Salling was captured by the Cherokee Indians, and remained in captivity for several years. With Lewis, at that time, was a man by the name of McKey. The three men- John Lewis, John McKey and John Salling-came to the valley. Lewis settled at Staunton, McKey at Buffalo Gap, and Salling at the forks of the James river, near Clifton Forge. Lewis. set to work to bring his friends to the new country. McKey and Salling lived and died without taking any part in the colonization of the valley. Benjamin Burden was agent for Lord Fairfax. Lewis met him in Williamsburg, in 1736. Burden went back with him to the valley. They hunted together, with Sampel and Andrew Lewis, sons of John Lewis. They captured a buffalo calf and took it as a present to Governor Gooch. Gooch entered an order allowing Burden to locate 500,000 acres on the waters of the James and the Shenandoah, on the condition that 100 families he settled on the located lands within ten years. It must be presumed that Lewis kept in touch with his home people in Ireland during these years. Any way, 100 families, all from the north of Ireland, were settled within one year, and this is the reason that by 1738 churches and schools were needed in the vicinity of what is now Staunton. In 1745 enough people had settled to form the county of Augusta, and the town of Staunton was founded the same year. Frederick county was formed in 1738, and the town of Winchester something earlier. As late as 1852 Winchester was the largest town west of the Blue Ridge, in Virginia, with the exception of Wheeling. The Lewis settlement of Scotch-Irish had cut across the path of the German settlers from Pennsylvania. Rockingham was the farthest south of the German counties. Washington in his desperation turned to the fighting Scotch-Irish of Augusta, and not to the peaceful, Quaker-like Germans. John Lewis included in his plans the occupation of the Greenbrier valley, which, with its rich limestone lands, was like the country around Staunton. His Scotch-Irish settlements expanded to the south and west for various reasons. A great deal of his 100,000-acre grant taken in the name of the Greenbrier colony, was located in the Big Levels around Lewisburg. This was a treeless plateau country. It had all the appearance of a prairie. The land was rich, and by 1763 the country was pretty well settled. Dates are hard to get, but we mark this date well because this was the year that the Indians put them all out of their summer hunting grounds, killing a number and raiding as far east as Staunton. About 1765 the settlers commenced to come back. Lewisburg was probably named from Gen. Andrew Lewis, who assembled his forces there, which he took to Point Pleasant and fought the battle at that place. It was first called the Savannah, because of its being a prairie, and later Camp Union. In 1751, John Lewis was, with his son, Andrew Lewis, surveying the 470 acres at Marlinton. Andrew Lewis was thirty-one years of age. John Lewis was seventy-three years old. They found a trapper here by the name of Jacob Marlin, from whom this town takes its name, it being first called Marlin's Bottom. Jacob Marlin trapped out of Winchester, as did John Marlin, and we have often wondered if they were not really the same man. John Lewis was born in Donegal, the extreme northwestern county of Ireland, in the Province of Ulster, in the year 1678. In 1729 he killed a man and fled the country. He went to Portugal, and thence to Williamsburg, in the Virginia colony. He made it possible for the Scotch-Irish to settle in Virginia, and he is the forerunner of the Scotch-Irishmen of this part of the county. He filled the country with Macs. He died in Staunton, February 1, 1762. We, the people of these Scotch-Irish counties, owe more to him than to any other man connected with the early history of America. -Pocahontas Times.